The Influence Of Social Support And Collectivism On Undergraduates’ Career Choice Overload

Career choice is of great significance for undergraduates’ career development. Nowadays,there are more and more channels for undergraduates to obtain employment information, and a large number of career choice sets are provided for undergraduates by recruiting websites and companies. It can help students to obtain a flexible choice, but it may also give rise to career choice overload. In this research, three experiments are designed to describe career choice overload, to analyze college students’ preferences of career choice set size, to explore the factors that impact undergraduates’ career choice overload. We use the experimental method to collect data, and use SPSS17.0 software to analyze the data. In Experiment 1, students from a university in Tianjin province were invited to take part in the experiment, we proved the career choice overload phenomenon by comparing the differences of College Students’ career choice satisfaction and regret between different career choice set size group. In Experiment 2, the students from a university in Tianjin were selected to participate an individualistic and collectivism cultural tendency survey, which would be screened out to allot to social support group and nonsocial support group. Then explored the influence of social support and collectivism on the preference of large choice size. In Experiment 3, we analyzed the differences of participates’ satisfaction and regret from different social support and different collectivism groups of different groups when facing different career choice set sizes. Then explored the impact of social support and collectivism on College Students’ career choice overload. The main conclusions of the research are as follows:1. Career choice overload phenomenon were found in undergraduates’ career decision making.College students’ satisfaction and regret of different choice set sizes were significantly different.When the number of occupations was more than 15, satisfaction decreased and regret increased.There is a contradiction between large choice set preference and career choice overload in undergraduates’ career choice.2. Undergraduates’ collectivist culture inclination tends to be common. The collectivism impacts undergraduates’ preference of large career choice set. The collectivist students prefer smaller choice set when the individualistic students prefer larger choice set. Social support has an effect on career choice set size preference, participates in social support group prefer smaller choice set than that in nonsocial support group.3.Social support impact undergraduates’ career choice overload. Career choice overload did not appear when priming social support, but appeared when priming non social support.Collectivism does not significantly affect career choice overload.